And this is why the Global Warming movment is mumped up

[john "teach me how to" dougie]

I wish these climate scientists could tell me if it was going to rain tomorrow. Would really help me plan ahead.

climatologist =/ meterologist

but just as accurate.

[pike]

Do I need to start yet ANOTHER thread on climategate? Cause I will

[Sugar Dick]

Prima facie evidence scientists don't know what the fake they're talking about.  This guy needs to trade in his colored socks for a helmet and some batting gloves.   

Giants starter Tim Lincecum has a filthy curveball, but scientists say it doesn’t move differently than any other curveball.

In fact, all curveballs follow a similar parabolic path, so despite what it looks like on television (or from the batter’s box), pitches never “drop off the table.”

Arthur Shapiro of American University and Zhong-Lin Lu of the University of Southern California explained the illusion of the curveball’s break in a study published this month in the journal PLoS ONE.

“The curveball does curve, but the curve has been measured and shown to be gradual,” Shapiro said on the American University website. “It’s always going to follow a parabolic path. But from a hitter’s point of view, an approaching ball can appear to break, drop or do a whole range of unusual behaviors.”

That funky movement is because of how a batter follows the ball from when it leaves a pitcher’s hand to when it crosses the plate.

“If the batter takes his eye off the ball by 10 degrees, the size of the break is about one foot,” Lu said on the American University website.

Batters tend to switch from central to peripheral vision when the ball is about 20 feet away. At that point, the eye’s peripheral vision lacks the ability to separate the motions of the spinning ball, the scientists reported. In particular, it gets confused by the combination of the ball’s velocity and spin.

The result is a gap between the ball’s trajectory and the path as perceived by the batter. The gap is small when the batter switches to peripheral vision, but gets larger as the ball travels the last 20 feet to home plate.

As the ball arrives at the plate, the batter switches back to central vision and sees it in a different spot than expected. That perception of an abrupt change is the “break” in the curveball.

“Depending on how much and when the batter’s eyes shift while tracking the ball, you can actually get a sizable break,” Lu said at the website. “The difference between central and peripheral vision is key to understanding the break of the curveball.”

So what should batters do? Follow the advice that batters have heard since they were little kids: Keep your eye on the ball.

Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2010/10/21/2341247/scientists-say-a-curveball-doesnt.html#ixzz133RYwnUy